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64 July-August July-August 65
Grinne Shffrey
I
t’s not just lawyers and accountants who
run the world: consultants on
environmental, architectural, planning and
heritage matters are determining a lot
about our physical environment and
wellbeing. Accountability requires their
standards and costs be subjected to scrutiny. I
thought i’d take a look at the doyens of heritage
consultancy, Sharey and Associates. Though in
the early years of the practice they pioneered best
practice, latterly there have been controversies
as the practice moved to a new generation.
Shaffrey Associes,
building-conservion
royly nd pioneers
of bes prcice, don’
lwys pply he
highes sndrds,
especilly lerly
By Michel Smih
towns and villages in succeeding decades, Paddy
did high-quality conservation work, including
Monaghan Courthouse and St Mary’s Church in
Dublin.
Then-Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald asked
Sharey to convene a plenipotentiary equivalent
of the Wide Streets Commissioners for three years
in the late 1980s. Sharey was consultant
architect. In an era of plastic signs and broken
phone boxes, the idea was to promote higher
visual standards, pedestrianisation and
improved street furniture in the rotting core of
Ireland’s capital city. The Haughey government
closed it down peremptorily though Sharey
agreed to complete its work unpaid.
Maura Sharey was company secretary of the
Irish Architectural Archive, convenor of the
planning sub-committee of the Irish branch of
ICOMOS, the International Council on Monuments
and Sites, and a long-standing, non-active
member of An Taisce. She had obtained a post-
graduate degree in York, on the conservation of
O’Connell Street, Dublin.
Maura, the more charming and gregarious of
the two, was involved in campaigns to save
historic buildings, such as the courthouse in
Longford, about which she wrote a detailed
report that was instrumental in stopping the
local authority demolishing it. In her ICOMOS
role she produced a report on historic towns that
provided guidance for the EU-funded Urban and
Village Improvement Scheme and even lobbied
local authorities to improve standards at the
invitation of the zealous architect Minister, Liz
McManus. David Grin, former director of the
Irish Architectural Archive, notes that Maura
Sharey pioneered the use of lime mortar in the
restoration of historic buildings: “Her work on
the King House in Boyle was done to highest
standards, but she was not the type of person
who was afraid to ask people for advice. She was
a very sensitive architect and very careful about
everything she did”.
Putting their money where their mouths were,
Chafing at
Shffrey
Associes
Garret FizGerld sked Prick Shffrey
o convene plenipoeniry equivlen of
he Wide Srees Commissioners for hree
yers in he le 1980s bu he Hughey
governmen soon closed i down
Patrick and Maura Shaffrey,
conservation pioneers
Paddy Sharey, born 1931, was President of An
Taisce, Ireland’s national trust, and first President
of the Planning Institute, more than 40 years ago.
He and his wife, Maura, who died tragically young
in 1997 were architects and planners. They came
to attention with their pioneering book ‘The Irish
Town - An Approach to Survival’ published in
1975. They followed up with ‘Buildings of Irish
Towns’ (1983), and Irish Countryside Buildings
(1985), both illustrated by Maura’s full-colour
watercolour drawings. The couple did much good
work proposing conservation plans for Ireland’s
ENVIRONMENT
Ptrick nd Mur Shffrey
64 July-August July-August 65
the Shareys restored a seventeenth-century
house on Ormond Quay as their home and oce.
In the 1990s they filled in a site next to it with a
controversial part-tiled brick apartment block.
For many years John Banville lived in the
penthouse. Drawings for the scheme showed it
rising less high over the ancient neighbours than
the operative indication of its height above sea
level — which determined the real height — did. I
should declare that I was involved in objecting to
this on behalf of Dublln City An Taisce of which I
was chair at the time and that I live in a
seventeenth-century house further up the quays.
Every year ICOMOS sponsors a Maura Sharey
memorial lecture. By all accounts it is a civilsed
aair. Their daughter, Gráinne Sharey, has
been President of the part-OPW-funded ICOMOS
Ireland since 2017. She is also a former Vice Chair
of the Architects Institute.
My first personal awareness of Paddy Sharey
was when the occupation of Regency buildings
being demolished by Temple Bar Properties on
Essex Quay came to an end following poorly
handled negotiations. Sharey, a reticent Cavan
man whose brother owned the Stag’s Head pub,
would not himself be an occupier.
In later years, Sharey and Associates, with
daughter Gráinne now the “lead partner” (with
no other partners specified) have got on the
gravy train of expensive conservation plans now
deemed necessary for almost any significant
planning move, or grant application, for a
heritage building. They are well regarded by local
authorities, notably Dublin City Council for whom
they are often chief conservation consultants.
Perhaps inevitably many conservation projects
involve compromises but Sharey Associates
have been the wrong end of a number of
controversies.
Controversies
Carlisle pier, Dún Laoghaire
A 2007 inventory of Dún Laoghaire harbour’s
architectural heritage by Sharey Associates
mistakenly described the Carlisle Pier engine
shed from which Collins and Grith took o to
the Treaty negotiations as a “warehouse” – even
though its report noted that the Dublin-Kingstown
line had been extended on to the pier when it was
built in 1859 and it couldn’t really have been
anything else. The building was as a result not
protected for its history and architecture.
While the Sharey report identified the granite
pier as being of “regional” importance
architecturally, it assigned no such standing to
any of the structures on it. In 1990 the almost
completely intact wrought iron-trussed roof
canopy of the unique Victorian engine shed,
preserved under a utilitarian 1960s ferry terminal,
was smashed, by Dún Laoghaire Harbour
Company’s excavators.
Gráinne sharey, who organised the inventory,
chaired the Heritage Council’s architectural
committee at the time and defended the harbour
company’s actions against an attack by An
Taisce’s Ian Lumley who claimed the 1859 station
was “the Dublin Airport of its time”. According to
Frank McDonald in the Irish Times: “She also
reiterated that the buildings being demolished
were of no importance”, though others demurred
and noted that the size of the doomed structure
had mandated a planning permission for the
demolition.
Tigerish proposals to redevelop Carlisle Pier for
a national marine life centre, with a floating stage
for performances, a 227-bed hotel and more than
220 apartments were inevitably dropped and the
station site is now a public car-park with 100
spaces and a pavilion “utilising elements of the
former train shed” – such as its cast-iron
columns.
Broadstone
As conservation architects to the Grangegorman
development project in Dublin City, Shareys
organised the landscape works to the
de-commissioned Broadstone Station, one of the
most important buildings in Dublin City. The
master plan was to provide for an “urban plaza
and park”, to be known as “Broadstone Green”
there, though that would be a grandiose
description of the sterile forecourt that
materialised. Shaffrey Associates failed to
exercise any restraint on the building of a massive
retaining wall by the Railway Procurement
Authority to the south of the building, which the
Masterplan envisages for “market use”. It
subverts the view of the great station edifice
particularly for the hoards of Luas users whom it
is intended to sequester.
Dublin Civic Library
Shaffreys got the brief for the proposed
adaptation and refurbishment of the former
Coláiste Mhuire buildings on Dublin’s Parnell
Square along with a large new-build extension to
create a new Dublin City Library and cultural
quarter and a masterplan for the entire square
including the Hugh Lane Gallery.
Yvonne Farrell of Grafton Architects,
commissioned to do the new build, and Gráinne
Sharey talked about opening up the privilege of
access to Georgian rooms to everyone. The
privilege has been delayed as the project did not
proceed after the initial costing of €60m rose to
€130m with uncontrolled mission creep as the
library got more grandiose and the ambit of the
plans spread to the inevitable cultural quarter
around the square with enthusiastic support from
City Architect, Ali Grehan. Kennedy Wilson,
always unlikely philanthropists, pulled their
funding. Grehan resigned in protest against the
termination of contracts with the architectural
team after expenditure of €2.6m. though she
swiftly engineered her de-resignation. In the end
the library is being built with the add-ons
curtailed.
Shareys have worked with Grafton, one of the
best architectural practices in the country, on
Moore St and the Crawford Gallery too.
Moore S Eser Rising Sie
In 2005 Dublin City Council chose Sharey
Architects to report on the architecture of the
controversial Moore St site, including the houses
to which the 1916 garrison had retreated under
fire; campaigners were pleased that Gráinne
Sharey in particular identified number 18 as
part-nineteenth-Century. Shareys were then
In ler yers, wih Grinne now he “led
prner”, Shffreys hve go on he grvy
rin of expensive conservion plns now
deemed necessry for lmos ny significn
herige plnning move
1859 engine shed, bove, covered by 1960s
teminl, ws dismissed s wrehouse, nd
demolished, probbly unlwfully
Lndscpe nd plz wrecked by RPA’s
boorish wll
66 July-August July-August PB
retained by Chartered Land for their initial,
ultimately thwarted, planning application which
proposed to demolish a substantial majority of
the terrace of thirteen buildings, most of which
retain eighteenth-cntury fabric, on the street; and
would have built cumbrously on and around the
four surviving buildings. Relatives of Rising
leaders note that, in their assessment of the
buildings, Shaffreys failed to identify the
eighteenth-century vaulted cellars to the rear of
14 to 17 Moore St and under 13 Moore Street, or
the eighteenth-century party wall of 13/14 Moore
Street. Campaigners also noted the lack of
importance aorded by Shareys to the discovery
of Dublin’s post-mediaeval midden (refuse dump)
which runs fully three metres deep under the
yards of the 1916 terrace,possibly stretching as
far as O’Connell Street: an archaeological
treasure trove. And under Shareys’ ‘watch’ the
protected National Monument buildings at 14-18,
which were re-roofed, as well as the other
buildings, deteriorated further. A parallel master
plan drawn up by conservation architects Kelly
and Cogan and Fuinneamh, commissioned by
campaigners, proposed full restorations of the
shops and their original rear gardens. Shareys
had made important enemies.
Embarrassingly for Gráinne Sharey, important
evidence she gave about the Moore St
development was not accepted by the High Court.
She swore that Chartered Land had substantively
commenced work on the land which within three
months of a particular date as required by their
permission. Judge Max Barrett wrote: “I say that
any claim by Gráinne Sharey that substantive
works commenced ·within 3 months of the
approval (and her entire Adavit) is in fact
factally and fundamentally undermined and
contradicted by her own letter dated 6th October
2014 to Dublin City Council. The court also
dismissed her evidence that the risk of brick
saturation from a banner attached to 14-17
Moore St was “unlikely”, describing her opinion
On Moore S, Shffrey Archiecs suppored he iniil
plnning pplicion which proposed o demolish some
eigheenh-cenury buildings nd build cumbrously
round surviving buildings; nd filed o idenify
eigheenh-cenury cellrs, he eigheenh-cenury pry
wll of Numbers 13/14 Moore nd he medievl dump
loced in he rer yrds
as “sanguine”. Against this background it’s
perhaps not surprising that campaign groups do
not want Shareys retained further.
According to Niall O Donoghue of the Heritage
Department in his October 2016 presentation to
the Group:
“It is anticipated that arrangements with all
parties (above) will conclude early in the New Year
when the current phase of stabilisation and
preservation work is completed”.
This appears now not to be the case. This year
John Cahill of the OPW explained that Shareys
were being kept on because of their “proven
history of dealing with buildings of the particular
sensitivity of National Monuments” and because
they “have been successfully engaged with a
variety of projects with OPW over many years”.
It’s shoddily unlawful.
Lack of tender process was
unlawful
Despite Eamon O Cuív TD’s best eorts, no
clarification has been provided by the OPW as to
why the names of the Chartered Land design
team, including Shareys, appears on a recent
scoping document implying they would carry out
the proposed works on 14 to 17/18 Moore Street.
The 1916 relatives group had understood that
once the buildings were in State ownership, no
Chartered Land personnel or agencies that
supported their demolition application would
remain in place.
Government guidance on tendering for
contracts worth over €25,000 suggests using
e-tenders, drawing up tender documents and
weighting award criteria.
For tenders over €25,000, the EU mandates
advertisement in its Ocial Journal and that:
“Evaluation should be carried out by a team with
the requisite competency. Transparency and
objectivity is achieved by the use of weighted
criteria, including price, which allows a
comparative assessment of tenders under each
criterion”. Exceptions are very strictly construed
and include “for repetition of similar works or
services by the original supplier where such
works or services are in conformity with a basic
project for which the original contract was
awarded - however, the original project must
indicate the extent of any possible works and
services and the conditions under which they will
be awarded and can only be availed of during the
three years following the conclusion of the
original contract”. This patently does not pertain
here because of the elapse of more than three
years since the original contract — which itself
appears not to have been subject to the law for
tendering — in 2015.
Accolades
Over the years architectural awards have meant
little to non-architects but the Royal Institute of
the Architects of Ireland has often bestowed
baubles on Shareys. Award-winners include the
pricy but sensitive restoration of a tenement
museum at 14 Henrietta St, the best housing of
2015 at Mount Temple and in 2011, 2006 and
1999-2001 for best cultural building –
‘Unbuilding’ in Bray’s Mermaid Gallery,
excellence through accessibility — Johnston
Library in Cavan town and conservation — Ardfert
Cathedral in Kerry.
Patrick Sharey also won the RIAI Gold Medal
for Architecture in 2020 with the following
citation: “Patrick Sharey is renowned for a life-
times [sic] work in the related fields of
architectural conservation; an achievement
widely acknowledged by the multiple distinctions
awarded. Patrick’s outstanding achievement has
been his insistence on the integration of
conservation awareness into the everyday
vocabulary of architecture – something which
had been previously regarded as the esoteric and
specialist. The ground breaking and beautiful
publications by Patrick and his late wife, Maura,
on Irish towns and townscape opened the eyes
of a generation to the enduring virtues and
beauty of our vernacular”.
In addition to the country’s architectural
heritage, Shareys have an important legacy of
their own to defend.
Moore Street, 1916: Rising leders retreted
from GPO
Moore Street ntionl monument: llowed to
dilpidte
